Boiotian group identity in the late archaic and early classical periods

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Abstract

This dissertation presents late-sixth and early fifth-century Boiotia
as a case study in the construction and articulation of group identity in
archaic and early classical Greece. Boiotia is a region well-suited for such
consideration, for by the mid-fifth century three different types of
community operated there simultaneously: ethnos, polis, and koinon.
Analysis of these groups suggests that Boiotia was a crossroads of sorts,
between north and south, between polis-dominated Attika and ethnosoriented
Thessaly. My project builds on recent scholarship on Greek
regionalism and is also informed by recent studies of Greek identities.
I first challenge the traditional view of an archaic Boiotian military
and political federation by reanalyzing the evidence normally adduced in
such arguments. I propose instead that institutionalized political and
military federalism became part of Boiotian identity only in the mid-fifth
century after the Boiotian victory at Koroneia.
In the following seven Chapters I offer a more nuanced definition
of this group identity, suggesting that before Koroneia Boiotian selfidentification
was premised upon economic needs and a perceived
common culture. I examine use of ethnika from Boiotian and nonBoiotian
literary texts and inscriptions, the genealogy of the eponymous
Boiwtov", traditions of the Boiotian migration, and the significance of the
"Boiotian" shield in archaic iconography. Together these sources suggest
that the Boiwtoiv publicly connected themselves to epic tradition and
specific heroes of the Trojan war while also claiming a tradition of
migration and invasion from Thessaly. To one another they were a
religious group concerned with Athena and Poseidon. This collective
compares with other constructions of group identity in the late archaic
period, e.g., Phokian. In the final chapter I discuss manifestations of
Boiotian group identity in relation to the Phokians and Thessalians as
evident in literature and myth.